I wrote about this back in August so it was nice to see an update to the story about the 14 year old boy who posed with a Jesus statue and made it look like he was getting a blow job. He’s banned from social media for a while and has 350 hours of community service to complete.

Among the other punishments, he must obey a curfew of 10 p.m., no alcohol or other controlled substances monitored by random drug testing and stay in school.

District Attorney Bill Higgins presented the decree to the court.

After accepting the agreement and while settling the number of community service hours, Judge Ling focused on the religious rights of Love in the Name of Christ, noting that the juvenile’s actions infringed upon their rights to practice their faith.

I bold the bit that makes no sense. He didn’t storm their church and shoot everyone who tried to pray to Jesus or tie them up and take all their bibles away. He posed outside on the lawn for a stupid picture. How does posing for a picture get in the way of their right to worship? Explain that to me.

Upon successful completion of these terms and conditions, his case will be dismissed and the juvenile will have no criminal record.

Personally, I think it should have been tossed out of court from the get-go with a “don’t be that stupid again” warning as he went out the door.

“I know that there are many groups that say this case is about religious rights, and quite frankly, they are right,” said Higgins in a written statement. “But it is the religious rights of the Christian organization that owns the statue and has placed it for display on their private property that have been implicated. They have every right to practice their faith unmolested. In American [sic], we all enjoy the right to freedom of expression and the freedom to practice our religious beliefs without interference, but that right ends where those same rights of another begin.”

Get him for trespassing on private property, maybe, but his behaviour did not infringe on anyone’s rights to worship. He was just doing a stupid thing and took pictures of himself doing it. He did not molest parishioners, he posed with a statue.

Maybe they should have considered the possibility of it being mistreated before sticking it out there. Maybe it could have been on a higher, less easy to access pedestal, or a design that wouldn’t give people these kinds of kinky notions. People are weird.